Sun Tzu taught a set of powerful methods for winning constuctively in competition. The Science of Strategy Institute's multiple award-winning work makes the strategy of The Art of War easier to use.
Sun Tzu's The Art of War sets out the rules for winning productively instead of destructively. Our Warrior's Rule Book makes these lessons easier to apply to your specific situation. This article is from its Creating Momentum section. New articles appear daily from our outline of topics.
"There are only a few notes in the scale.
Yet you can always rearrange them.
You can never hear every song of victory." Sun Tzu's The Art of War 5:2:11-13
"Both traditions want people to think. They want people who are problem solvers and can take apart a problem and put it back together again.” Marlene Barron
Linear thinking requires using pre-planned processes, working with systems and machines. We are trained to use these systems without understanding them. We can start to think that we need not and cannot understand how systems work, but even things that can be hard to make can be easy to understand. We are not taught a comprehensive method for taking existing things apart to see how they are made to work. We take the existing components for granted. When we use products, machines, and processes, we are not aware of the parts. The human mind filters out what is expected and taken for granted.
Sun Tzu teaches that opportunities are hidden (3.2.2 Opportunity Invisibility). As we lose sight of the components of which things are made, an opening is created. We want identify overlooked components that we can exploit. Those who take the time to break things into their parts can use this understanding to their strategic advantage.
The following seven rules describe Sun Tzu's systematic process for identifying the elements that can be rearranged or replaced to create surprise.
